Friday, July 17, 2009

Man on the Moon


So it has been 40 years. My God. I was a little kid, but I remember that Sunday so well. Our family was on a Sunday pool party in Rio Grande and everyone was talking about what was going to happen that night. Man was going to walk on the moon. The excitement was so huge. I couldn't wait for the party to end so we could go home and watch the event on tv. And it was Via satellite which was a big deal those days. Only BIG events were shown via satellite in Puerto Rico. And this one was the biggest of them all. One of the biggest of all time. And I had a chance to see it!

Well, there was something of a letdown. The tv image was extremely poor. One couldn't see much. It was blurry and dark. We were not sure what we were seeing...was that Neil Armstrong? Is he walking on the moon? I expected the transmission to be all clear and crisp. Here was the biggest event in my lifetime and I could only see ghostly images!

But I didn't care. I was watching it. And days later, I rushed to the newsstands to get the Life magazine full of great photos. Photos that showed clearly what we didn't see on television. My lifelong love affair with all things NASA had just begun.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

100 minutes


Someone once told me that when he felt life was becoming a burden, he would put a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie on his DVD player and every pain in the world would go away. He said it would work like magic.

Well, the other night I finally saw my first Astaire-Rogers movie. Hard to believe, but I had never seen one in its entirety. And I can see what my friend means. There is a joy, an innocence and a beauty in those old black and white movies that is truly magical. In the world shown in these movies, love conquers all and everything can be solved by a little bit of singing and dancing.
Life is not like that, but for 100 minutes it is. And what more can you ask of a work of art? 100 minutes of joy is a real gift.

snapshot

Listening to some guitar music.
Just being here.
And breathing.
Realizing where I am now.
Capturing the moment like I do when I take a photo.
A snapshot of me now.
How did it turn out?
It's a good one.
Yes.
See?